After Vernon city council received a complaint that Kin Beach was rendered “unusable” by geese droppings, it asked staff to look at paying for more scare tactics.
However, city staff believe that would not be effective and would cost more than $13,000.
Right now the Vernon pays a wildlife control expert to use scare tactics on the birds and clean up their excrement in several local parks each morning in the spring and summer.
The city’s parks and public spaces manager Kendra Kryszak said the wildlife control expert didn’t think repeating the process in the evening would be worthwhile as “people are usually using the beach areas and the playing fields at this time, effectively deterring the geese from accessing these areas.”
Kryszak said staff are now looking into the possibility of “harvesting” the geese.
Last month the city got a complaint email arguing Kin Beach was too full of geese droppings to be used.
“Last summer I had my two year old granddaughter visiting and I took her to the Kin Beach playground. Unfortunately the geese excrement was so bad that I couldn’t let her run free on the grass or use the playground,” wrote David Bissett in an email to council.
“The whole area was unusable for us so we had to leave.”
Bissett suggested the solution might be to allow some off-leash dog access to the beach.
Vernon City Council is expected to consider the issue again at their meeting on Monday.
A report from Environment Canada on geese control notes that one way the public can help is to avoid feeding birds.
“Geese will not abandon a site as long as people feed them,” the federal report notes.
“When the diets of geese are not supplemented with handouts and they have to depend on the more limited natural food supply, some or all will move elsewhere.”
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